kanisatha

I guess this is where different people (among those who did not like the D:OS games) have different reactions. For me, BG3 is not (yet) sufficiently differentiated from D:OS2 for me to like it. Still waaaaay too much D:OS2 in the game for my taste.

There's a lull in news about good/interesting games to talk about, and vacuums always demand to be filled.

Apologies. I failed to stick with my own rule of not commenting on politics.

I'm in a teacher's union too but I will never vote D under any circumstances. The D's talk a good talk about education, but what they actually stand for and their education "policies" are the opposite of what will give students a good quality education. Yes the R's are not interested in the education issue (though I think that may be changing nowadays), but the R's not doing anything about education is markedly better than the D's doing something about education, because what the D's do to education is actually harmful to students' education. Do nothing is better than cause harm.

The reason is that instead of being organizations that simply fight for their members' rights, unions have become fronts for one political party at the expense of all other parties. So naturally people who identify with those other parties are not going to be supportive of an organization whose purpose is to serve the electoral interests of one specific party (oftentimes even at the expense of their own members' preferences and interests). If unions became truly non-partisan, non-ideological organizations that exclusively fight for their members' workplace rights and nothing else, then they would absolutely be a whole lot more popular.

I was reading about this yesterday. Loeb seems to have quite a bit of funding for this project, so I'm hopeful.

Yup, and the Su-75 is basically a single-engined version of the Su-57 with the exact same technology but downgraded somewhat for export. Even the engine is the same as the Su-57, which is just an upgraded version of the Su-35 engine, whereas the F-35's engine is a revolutionary new engine just like the aircraft itself (which is why the F-35 engine is also going through some teething and parts issues).

Ah I see. I thought you were referring to Russia's F-22 equivalent, which is already flying as the Su-57. Seems like designation number inflation is even higher in Russia than in the US military.

I actually agree, and do believe that if US and NATO forces had to fight the Russians either in Ukraine or in the Baltic republics in the near future, they will get their asses handed to them in relatively short order. But this has nothing to do with technology comparisons. US and NATO forces are technological superior by a wide margin. It's their morale, training, and will to stand and fight, alongside US and NATO people's willingness to sacrifice and accept casualties that I seriously question and which will doom the West. I mean, if the Taliban can chase us out of Afghanistan and Iranian militias can chase us out of Iraq .... Re. "Checkmate," the cost estimates are all well and good, but ultimately it comes down to performance. And I don't see much performance value in Russian 5th gen platforms at all. Take the MiG-35, built purely for export at a very low cost. Despite costing only a fraction of what Western 4.5 gen aircraft cost, nobody wants it. Yes countries want low cost, but not at the expense of quality/performance. Also, talk of the F-35 being bad is just utter nonsense, being fed by ignorant idiot news media types. Every single country that has operated it has their pilots only raving about its performance. Yes, just like any other revolutionary platform, it is having some teething issues, issues that will be overcome in time. But it is very much a revolutionary platform for future air operations with incredible capability.

I imagine you meant the Su-57. But yeah, I will grant that the S-500 system is probably the best area AD system in the world right now. The performance parameters of the Su-57, however, are very much questionable.

An interesting note. On the Steam page for this game there are items already listed under additional content for this game. One is a season pass, and if you click on that it says season pass for the three upcoming DLCs for this game. So three DLCs confirmed.

The MiG-21, -23, and -29 (for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generations respectively) were all supposed to be "checkmate" aircraft. None of them worked out that way at all, with popularity peaking with the -21 and sharply dropping thereafter, because customers learned that indeed especially with Russian products, you do get what you paid for -- i.e., garbage. The only thing the Russians are good at is bombast. Besides, this lame aircraft will also have China's FC-31 as a cheap export competitor, and nowadays the Russians are not only behind the West technologically but also behind the Chinese.

Not weird at all, at least not to me. I'm exactly the same way, and hate min-maxing. I go so far as to categorically avoid lowering any stat to where it gives me a negative or a penalty. And yet, I did find some builds out there that also avoided min-maxing and just generally provided useful guidance.

Don't worry. If Kingmaker is any indication, there'll be tons of character build guides available soon after the game comes out.

Sounds very similar to how I felt the first and only time I've played it. I also got through buying/building all the houses, but quit ahead of ending any of the major threats. The tedium was just too overwhelming.

Yeah of all the indies in recent years, it's the one that comes truly close to giving you that IE games vibe.

This and P:WotR are the two games I am so looking forward to.

You're very welcome! I don't at all regret having backed it (and don't ever see funding RPGs as a waste of my money even when a particular game doesn't quite pan out), which is also true of their other game, Torment, for which I truly hope to see a sequel some day. As for the combat, yes actually the combat is interesting the first time within each dungeon level, and I did employ those very tactics you speak of, but subsequently it just became repetitious. I also didn't like the restriction of just being able to use only four of all your abilities at a time. It was a good game as dungeon crawlers go, but I was expecting a true cRPG and that it was not.

You sure did, Bruce! And I don't mind puzzles so long as they are not aggravating and/or repetitious. Thankfully the Director's Cut version of the game has a bard's song that allows you to bypass a lot of the puzzles and even some locked doors generally.

Just finished my first (and very likely last) run through The Bard's Tale IV, a game I backed. The story and characters were okay, but combat was boring, simplistic, and repetitious, and the game was way too invested in puzzle-solving which was also repetitious and tedious. Yet another inXile crowdfunded project that had such potential but then failed to live up to that potential. Now playing the small indie game Ember. It's good fun so far. The only comment to make is that it is so very unknown by anyone to the point where you cannot find any info relating to the game online. Googling for help is out if you find yourself stuck on something. So you're entirely on your own, like playing a game in the 1980s, which is both a good and a bad thing.

I liked the adopting thing too. But that also was exactly what showed me what was so wrong about the game and what it could've been. Once you get married, and adopt a bunch of kids, your wife and kids don't have any new interactions with you. For the rest of the game they have nothing to say or do with you. That disappointed me.

Not just survived but actually hugely improved and expanded in project scope. I hope those of you who are into the whole EA thing will buy the game and provide good feedback to improve it even further, you know, for the benefit of people like me who won't play it until full release.

And I'm one day ahead of you!

I think what I really love about DA, and what has kept me a huge fan despite disappointments over specific things in the games, is its world and lore. I can't get enough of it!

Keep in mind, though, that NGAD is a family of systems including unmanned bits. Recently the CSAF commented that he sees two separate airframes emerging from NGAD, one a high-end air dominance aircraft and the other a low-end (but still stealthy and very capable) multi-role aircraft. Plus likely also a Skyborg-operated "wingman" drone. And then there's also the Navy's 6th-gen program (F/A-XX). But yeah, I too can't wait to see these airframes.